Steve McQueen's final film is a bit of a mixed bag. The action scenes are good for 1980. Bounty hunter chases ramping up from a one on one battle with a behemoth, to a cornfield chase involving two dynamite wielding redneck brothers, a trans am, and a corn harvester, to the best, a 10 minute foot, train, and car chase through Chicago.
But the character filler in between the action sequences seems really out of place and pointless. You have Levar Burton's character introduced early on who just kind of hangs around, popping up here and there to work on a toaster and get beat up off screen. You get some people playing poker (continuously) in his house that serve no purpose to the film. There is a 5 minute segment with an old police sergeant who ends up running drugs out of the evidence room and ends up killing himself. You have Thorson's pregnant girlfriend who really doesn't seem all that happy with him for the most part. And former captured criminal creepily stalks both of them but you really don't care until the final confrontation, and even that still feels like a let down after the Chicago bounty chase. None of that really works in the film.
Enjoy it for the bounty chases, just don't get hung up on characters.
But the character filler in between the action sequences seems really out of place and pointless. You have Levar Burton's character introduced early on who just kind of hangs around, popping up here and there to work on a toaster and get beat up off screen. You get some people playing poker (continuously) in his house that serve no purpose to the film. There is a 5 minute segment with an old police sergeant who ends up running drugs out of the evidence room and ends up killing himself. You have Thorson's pregnant girlfriend who really doesn't seem all that happy with him for the most part. And former captured criminal creepily stalks both of them but you really don't care until the final confrontation, and even that still feels like a let down after the Chicago bounty chase. None of that really works in the film.
Enjoy it for the bounty chases, just don't get hung up on characters.
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